Skip to main content
Sauce

Anchovy Egg Sauce

A creamy sauce made with anchovy paste, egg, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Anchovy Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to form a roux.

  2. Add the anchovy paste and milk, stirring steadily to remove lumps.

  3. Cook until the sauce is smooth and thick.

  4. Stir in the minced egg and cayenne, then serve warm.

  5. For a richer sauce, add thick cream before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the roux and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a sauce.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds body and a soft, savoury texture to the sauce.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth that defines the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the roux. Adding liquid steadily while stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce cooks smooth rather than lumpy. Lumps form when starch clumps before it can hydrate evenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes